ROB was busy fine-tuning the sound controls when he heard Mr. Game and Watch enter the room.

He knew it was Mr. Game and Watch because he didn't bother opening doors before he went through them, as he was two-dimensional and even the most firmly closed door had a tiny gap. He also couldn't help making a soft beep-beep noise as he moved along in his jerky stop-motion gait. He was probably the only other person awake, unless Lucas had another nightmare and woke up, or Sonic was in the foyer racking up a massive bill by having four-hour-long conversations with people on the other side of the Universe called 'Alex Kidd' and 'Opa-Opa' at the top of his voice. The robot remembered that his friend had been testing the special effects.

"Beep-boop." reported Mr. Game and Watch, waving a '0' flag. This meant that everything was OK. He reported a '1' for an error and then another number that represented the code for that specific error (for instance, '9' meant 'the entire set exploded when I pressed the button').

The special effects in the Stadium were a mixture of virtual and physical. The virtual effects were mostly things unique to the Contender's home dimension that couldn't possibly be brought into the Stadium, while simpler things such as spikes, bombs and pitfalls were real. Some of the Contender's more dangerous, impractical or world-specific abilities were also toned down using power limiters and the effect made to look at full strength using virtual technology.

As well as this, ROB and Mr. Game and Watch maintained the lighting, the broadcasting station and other computer equipment needed for an enormous Stadium. They made sure the living arrangements were comfortable for the Contenders during the several weeks that they had to stay overnight during the Tournament. Some of them had special equipment that had to be maintained, such as Samus' suit and the increasing number of spaceships. Some of them needed special sleeping arrangements such as Sonic, who needed twenty four hour guard because he was technically a Prisoner of War, and Lucas and Ness, because they were under 18 and kept trying to pester the older Contenders into buying them beer. Master Hand, effectively the manager, did the paperwork and dealt with the customers and shareholders, while Crazy Hand looked after the actual dimensional travel and kept the pocket Universes open, as he was the only person insane enough to understand interdimensional quantum physics. Anything else was left up to the two-man technical crew. They didn't tire and nothing could distract them from the task in hand. One was a robot, the other... well, nobody was quite sure what Mr. Game and Watch was, exactly, but he was something that didn't need sleep.

Mr. Game and Watch was rather the enigma, maybe even a logical impossibility. He was somewhere in-between digital and physical – he was definitely physical, as ROB had seen him clout Ganondorf over the head with a frying pan and knock him halfway across the set, but he was also made of pixels, could produce things from nowhere and tell the time with perfect accuracy. He was very, very obsolete but functioned perfectly. The distinction between one of his race and the rest of them was uncertain. They had all seen more than one of them in the same place but they seemed to move in precise unison and if you stared at them too long, they all blended into one. ROB felt he understood him the most of any other Contender. He had calculated their age to be roughly similar – in other words, they were both practically museum pieces. He shared the same past – they had both had their entire race captured by Tabuu as slaves to work on massive systems and been forced to do things that weren't good. While R.O.B had been forgiven because everyone understood that he had to work for the enemy in order to save his people, the other Contenders were still suspicious of Mr. Game and Watch. The little man hadn't shown any remorse, or indeed any emotions at all. He had simply switched from working for Tabuu to working against him, from operating the battle cruiser to no longer operating it, without caring what he was doing. R.O.B was left alone because he was viewed as another maintenance droid, as part of the scenery, but Mr. Game and Watch still wasn't quite trusted.

"Beep?" asked Mr. Game and Watch, making an umbrella appear in his hand and pointing it at the soundsystem. ROB indicated that yes, it all worked. The robot pointed to the system that he wanted to check next, followed by the one he wanted Mr. Game and Watch to go and check.

"Beep-boop." said Mr. Game and Watch, apparently satisfied. He summoned a pan full of sausages and juggled them. He did things like that sometimes. Maybe he was counting out the time, one of his obsessions, or maybe he was bored. R.O.B sometimes suspected that time passed differently to Mr. Game and Watch. It would explain why he moved through the world with such strange jerky movements, as if he had lag.

There was still so much R.O.B didn't know about his friend Mr. Game and Watch, even though they worked together so closely and spent most of their time together. The robot realised that he didn't actually know if he could trust him. He hadn't betrayed them so far but then Mr. Game and Watch had proved to them that he could spend a very long time just waiting. Nobody could read his emotions or intent, they could barely communicate with him, that black pixellated form could hide so much. R.O.B just trusted him, somehow. It wasn't logical and robots weren't supposed to think irrational thoughts but R.O.B had a feeling that Mr. Game and Watch was a good partner and a person he could depend on.

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